This invention relates to seat covers, and more particularly relates to a single size seat cover that is capable of fitting a variety of sizes of seats, even though a substantial portion of the seat cover is made of an inelastic material.
For many years seat covers have been used to cover seats in automobiles, boats and home furnishings. In recent years it has been popular to use sheepskin as a seat cover material, especially in automobiles. The sheepskin provides comfort as well as adding a luxurious feel and look to the otherwise ordinary upholstery of an automobile. Since the seats in different automobiles are of different sizes, fitting a sheepskin seat cover for an automobile seat can be expensive if a custom seat cover is constructed for each seat. Further, if a sheepskin seat cover is designed to fit each different make and model of automobile, retailers would need to carry such a vast stock of seat covers in inventory that it would be impractical. Therefore, there have been attempts in the seat cover industry to provide sheepskin seat covers that will fit a wide variety of sizes of seats.
There are essentially, in the automobile industry, two types of bucket seats, one being referred to as the high-back and the other the low-back. The high-back seat, as the name implies, has a higher or longer back portion than the low-back seat. Also, it is almost universal that the uppermost portion of the back of a high-back seat narrows so that the high-back seat is narrower than the low-back. These two basic seat designs have led the industry in a direction of providing two sizes of sheepskin seat covers to handle most automobile needs. Both a high-back version and a separate low-back version are manufactured and maintained in stock by retailers to accommodate the two types of bucket seats.
Seat covers that fit both high-back and low-back bucket seats, that is, universal fit seat covers, are available, however they are constructed completely out of synthetic materials so that the entire seat cover is stretchable and, in this manner, they are constructed to fit both the high-back and low-back due to the overall stretchability of the fabric. Since sheepskin is a nonstretchable material, it has not previously been thought possible to provide a single size of sheepskin seat cover that would accommodate both the high-back and low-back bucket seats.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a sheepskin seat cover that fits both high-back and low-back bucket seats so that only one size seat cover need be kept in stock to meet the public's needs. It should be noted that while the present invention will be described primarily in the environment of automobile bucket seats, it is also possible to use the seat cover made in accordance with the principles of the present invention on other seats as well, for example, seats in boats, private planes, or even home furnishings. Therefore the discussion of the invention with regard to automobile seats is not meant to be limiting, but merely exemplary of one area of use of the seat covers of the present invention.